Richmond officials report progress under water consent order; 82% of recommendations complete, staff outlines next steps

Scott Morris, director of the Department of Public Utilities, told the Richmond City Council Organizational Development Standing Committee on June 23 that a Virginia Department of Health consent order taking effect June 28, 2025, formalizes corrective work at the city’s water treatment plant and sets multiple near-term reporting deadlines.

"The effective date of the consent order is 06/28/2025," Morris said. "It acknowledges all the corrective actions we've taken to date, which is about 155 actions. It imposes a civil charge of $6,817 and then the consent order itself resolves any alleged violations that are identified in that section."

Morris said Appendix A of the consent order lists roughly 230 total recommendations drawn from the city’s sanitary survey, EPA’s 2022 inspection report, the Virginia Department of Health (BDH) April 2025 inspection, and consultant reports by HNTB and SEH. He said about 82% of those items are complete and that weekly updates are produced on remaining items. "There's gonna get to a point where a lot of these are related to the capital improvement plan projects that we have," Morris said.

Why it matters: the consent order creates near-term compliance deadlines and formal reporting to BDH Richmond field office; it also ties remaining items to capital projects that will take longer to complete.

On timing and reporting, Morris said some deliverables are due within 120 days of the effective date and the first required quarterly sanitary-survey progress report will be due Oct. 10, 2025. He said the city will post milestone tracking on the utilities website rather than every single item in the long appendix.

Morris outlined operational and customer-facing changes the Department of Public Utilities has implemented or scheduled: removal of the convenience fee for card payments effective June 30, 2025; an increase in the credit-card charge threshold from $500 to $1,000 to reduce duplicate charges; and a streamlined billing-exceptions process. He said billing exceptions have dropped from about 10,000 for the June 2024–May 2025 period to roughly 2,800–2,875 outstanding exceptions in June 2025, with a daily generation rate of about 500 exceptions and a processing team of roughly 16 staff.

On meters and metering systems, Morris described a multi-year upgrade. "We are currently going through a meter upgrade project, where we're about 41,000 meters that are near their expected life," he said. "We've completed 9,000 of those. There exists about 70,000 meters holistically in the system." He said future state plans call for replacing about 7% of meters annually once the current push finishes and for an AMR/portal rollout for customers in early 2026.

Council members asked for clarity on deadlines and regional coordination. Council member Bridal asked when the 120-day deadlines fall due; Morris replied those are measured from the June 28 effective date. "We'll probably update the website to kind of track this along with the HNTB report," he said.

Council member Jordan asked about regional readiness and mutual aid during events such as boil-water advisories. Morris said DPU directors typically initiate calls among regional partners during emergencies and that mutual support often comes from shared parts inventories and ad hoc resource sharing. "Usually what happens in this scenario is that DPU directors initiate either a call between these partners to offer up assistance or discuss the ongoing issues," he said. He added that the city meets quarterly with regional DPU directors and engages more frequently during emergencies.

Council member Lynch thanked Morris for an on-site briefing at the treatment plant and for the progress responding to BDH citations. Morris indicated additional reports and updates will come to council as work continues.

The presentation was informational; the committee took no action on the water items during the public portion of the meeting. The committee previously voted to continue an unrelated civilian-review-board appointment item and a resolution (see separate votes summary).